


Thirteenth Step (Forward)

by MutantRiot



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: A Perfect Circle, Alternate Universe, Angst, Flash Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:28:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24264343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MutantRiot/pseuds/MutantRiot
Summary: A 12-part series of Cherik flash fan fictions based on the album "Thirteenth Step" by A Perfect Circle!
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Kudos: 2





	Thirteenth Step (Forward)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! So glad to finally have something to post again! APC's 13th Step album resonates with me a lot, and I thought it would be a fun challenge to write short flash fics based on each song on the album :] I hope you enjoy! <3

  1. **The Package**



_ I don’t need another friend  _ replayed over and over in Erik’s mind as he made his way through the empty halls. Classes had ended for the day hours ago, and he’d spent most of the time since buried in his chemistry textbook. He had to keep working, fighting through the equations and the scientific mumbo-jumbo. He’d given everything to get here, and he’d be damned if anything stopped him from graduating with the highest honors. He’d fought poverty, violence, death, and so much pain to even get to college. He couldn’t afford any distractions, especially not the bright-eyed, enthusiastic psychology major who had tried to sit with him at lunch. He  _ didn’t  _ need another friend, he was fine on his own. He had plenty of friends back home who understood him. Not some pretty boy with a fancy boarding school education and lots of friends. He didn’t need it. But what if he wanted it? So deep he could barely hear it, a voice screamed out for companionship, for love, for gentleness. But he couldn’t give in to that voice. All the suffering kept him in the game. But what if he wanted another friend… What if he wanted a confidante? What if… he did need another friend? No, he needed to keep his eye on the prize, and a friend wasn’t part of the deal. Still the tiny whisper of a voice persisted, “please, please, please…” 

  1. **Weak and Powerless**



Charles felt everything and nothing at once. The cold winter air swished snow around his feet as he walked, but he barely felt the cold. Nothing felt right. Erik should be there with him, not off god-knows-where in the middle of a snow storm. He’d left a short note that read - “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep lying to myself and saying I deserve your kindness. I have to leave. I’m sorry.” Those words were like a swift punch to the gut, and Charles was still struggling to catch his breath hours later.  _ How could he do this to me?  _

He’d frantically called and texted Erik immediately after he’d found the note. No reply - his calls went straight to voicemail, and his texts were delivering without being read. Charles broke into a run across campus to the only place Erik could possibly be: his friend Emma’s dorm room. He almost slipped and busted his ass on the ice accumulating on the sidewalk, but he needed to get to Greenwood. That  _ had  _ to be where Erik was. There was no one else he’d go to on campus, and he didn’t have a car. Charles yanked open the door and sprinted up the stairs to the third floor. Emma’s room was right at the end of the hall… His heart was sinking, and his feet felt like they’d turned to lead.  _ I can’t do this, _ he thought, frozen in the middle of the hall.  _ I don’t even know what I’d say…  _ Charles sunk down the wall, head in his hands and began to cry. He couldn’t do it… 

  1. **The Noose**



“He’s just fine without me,” Charles whispered to the empty room, his eyes brimming with tears. He felt like there was a crushing weight on his shoulders, forcing him into the fetal position in his bed. He hugged his knees tightly, shaking with the force of his sobbing. Erik acted like he’d never needed Charles, like he hadn’t been a scared little boy when they’d first met. He was the fearsome Magneto, leader of the Brotherhood, king of the underlings. He wasn’t the man Charles had fallen so deeply in love with. Erik had so much blood on his hands, so much that Charles knew he’d never escape it. Was Erik Lehnsherr gone forever? Would the man he loved ever return? Was it even possible? Or would Magneto rise again from the ashes of their love, never to face the world with compassion again. 

  1. **Blue**



“I just didn’t want to know,” Erik whispered, his face tear-stained and red. “I was so scared that I just couldn’t ask.” Charles cocked his head, carefully stroking his boyfriend’s head. 

“My darling, I would never do that. Do you trust me?” 

“Trusting is hard.” 

“Erik, lovely, I would never cheat on you. Never. What got you thinking about it?” 

“M-Moira…” 

Charles smiled, pressing his forehead against Erik’s. 

“Never. We had our time in the past, but I am with you, 110%, okay? I will always love you. You’re going to be my husband one day. You are my heart.” 

“Promise?” 

“I swear,” Charles replied seriously, gently kissing his boyfriend’s cheeks. “I promise.” 

  1. **Vanishing**



Erik wasn’t going to look back. He was leaving, Shaw would never put his hands on him again. He’d met someone else, someone kind and generous, someone who was hurting like him. Shaw didn’t know he’d been sneaking out every night with the help of this new friend. He was a mutant too, one of the first he’d met outside of Shaw’s hell of a lab. Charles was beautiful, brilliant, and extremely gifted. He was stealing Erik away tonight, this time forever. He walked into Erik’s room so nonchalantly that he could have sworn the telepath had been there a thousand times. He touched Erik’s hand with such gentleness that he shivered, so unused to a tender gesture. Was this what love was like? He’d endured so much pain he could barely remember. Maybe it was. Tonight, they’d leave together, and life would be different. Charles was going to teach him to love again, Erik could feel it. 

  1. **A Stranger**



“He’s literally a stranger, Erik! You barely know him!” Emma exclaimed to her friend as he poured himself a drink. 

“But he knows me. I let him in, in here,” he said, pointing emphatically to his temple. “It feels different.” 

“He’s a telepath. He can make you feel anything you want.” 

“He wouldn’t do that. You don’t know him!” 

“Neither do you! That’s my point!” 

“I know him well enough to know he cares about me. I just want to be close to him again…” 

“Then go back to him, leave us again. Leave your family.” 

Erik’s throat felt like he’d swallowed sand, and he couldn’t reply.  _ Family… Do I even have one?  _ Charles’s words rang in his head - “You’re not alone, Erik.”  _ Am I?  _

  1. **The Outsider**



With each step he took, Charles felt the anger rising in him. He grabbed a glass and poured himself a generous helping of scotch. He wanted to self-destruct, there was so much pain flowing through his veins. He needed closure. He needed his family back, the people he had chosen so carefully to trust and love with everything he had. Raven, his precious sister, and Erik, the first man he’d ever truly loved. They were both gone, vanished in a cloud of spiteful smoke, while he was left alone with his paralysis and loss and grief.  _ I told him he’d never be alone, but now I’m the one he left…  _

  1. **Crimes**



Erik’s heart was pounding as he walked down the corridor. Each step felt like a weight was dragging from his heels, and it was torture. The hall seemed to extend infinitely before him, and it was like he’d never reach Charles’s office. He felt people’s eyes on him, children’s whispers whipped through the school. 

_ Magneto’s back!  _

_ He’s going to see the Professor.  _

_ What’s happening? _

Erik felt dizzy as his hand rose to rap on the door. This would change his life forever… But before he could knock, a calm voice called from within, “Come in, Erik.” 

  1. **The Nurse Who Loved Me**



“Oh good Lord!” The nurse exclaimed, his blue eyes flashing with concern as Erik showed him the deep gash on his leg. “How’d that happen?” 

“Slipped doing repairs on my mom’s gutters. The ladder was slick I guess…” He said, a little embarrassed at his lie. He’d actually been on a slip n’ slide and had caught his leg on a stray beer can in the yard…But that wasn’t something he wanted to admit to a cute nurse at the ER. 

“Oh no! I guess no good deed goes unpunished. This might sting a little bit, but just for a few seconds, okay?” He swabbed Erik’s wound with some sort of cleaner, and it burned like a motherfucker. Erik tried to stifle a cry, but it came out as a squeak, and the nurse looked slightly startled, but then he laughed. 

“S-sorry!” Erik stuttered, his cheeks flushing. 

“No worries, I won’t tell anyone,” he replied, grinning broadly, and Erik’s heart heaved. Falling for the nurse at the ER. His friends would never let him hear the end of this… 

  1. **Pet**



Erik tossed and turned in bed, trying to drown out the screaming in his mind. He was powerless to stop it; he had to let them tire themselves out. He had to let them rip open his scars and make them bleed afresh. Shaw’s oozing, oily voice echoed in his skull - “You are mine. You will do as I say. I will protect you from the others. They don’t understand you like I do, no one ever will.” Erik felt tears start to slide down his cheeks, falling onto the grey expanse of his sheets.  _ Go away! Please let me be…  _ He knew these memories would be with him forever. All the pain would be there as long as he lived, and he was a slave to it, a mere pawn on the cosmic chess board. He was frightened and frightening, afraid and feared. No one could save him now. He was too far gone.  _ But what about Charles?  _

  1. **Lullaby**



“Go back to sleep,” Shaw ordered as Erik cowered in the door frame, clutching his pillow to his chest. 

“B-but the dreams are back! It’s all scaring me!”

“You’ll have to live with that pain. Either let it break you or learn to be a man and harness it. Use it. Get revenge.” 

“I don’t want to hurt anyone.” 

“What did you say?” 

“N-n-nothing, sir.” 

“That’s what I thought. Go back to sleep, Lehnsherr.”

“Yes, sir.” 

  1. **Gravity**



Charles rolled out onto the terrace and looked up at the stars. The expanse of the universe stretched above him, stars twinkling and shining with dead light. Erik was asleep, nestled in a stack of blankets in their bed, beautiful and serene. His mind was calm, a rare occasion, and Charles smiled as he glanced back at his sleeping partner. The man who was so full of rage and pain and grief was healing before him, every day a step closer to closure. Wounds were becoming scars, smoothed over by the gentle hands of time and patience. Charles remembered how timid and young Erik had seemed when they first kissed, like a startled young teenager. They weren’t young anymore, not too young anyway, but it didn’t matter. Erik had chosen to live, and they would be together as long as they drew breath. 


End file.
